Credit

Caption

Spiral galaxy M74. Optical image of the spiral galaxy M74 (NGC 628), a face-on spiral galaxy with a small nucleus and well-defined spiral arms. The nucleus appears yellow/white as it is populated mainly by older stars. The spiral arms contain more young blue stars, and some large starbirth regions (pink) can be seen. These are huge clouds of gas and dust which glow pink due to ionisation of their hydrogen gas by hot stars embedded within them. This galaxy lies around 30 million light years from Earth. This image was made by the CFH12K CCD camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA.